The King of Pop or the King?

Whose death is bigger?
To me, while Michael Jackson was huge.. I think THE King's death was the bigger deal.
I think Jackson's death is easier to do in the age f the Internet and the continuous news cycle.

Part of the reason for this might have been because Elvis never performed outside the United States, allegedly because Col. Tom Parker was an illegal immigrant and could not travel abroad.

But Elvis was still very much an active performer at the time of his death. He'd been on tour less than two months earlier, and had released an album less than a month before his death.

Jackson hadn't toured since 1997 (though he had a sold-out tour scheduled to begin next month) and hadn't released a studio album since 2001. He'd been more or less out of the spotlight for musical reasons for better than a decade.

So I say Elvis, for those reasons. That, and he was never accused (multiple times) of being a homosexual pedophile ...

Tangental gripe: At the time MJ's people forced MTV to sign a contract in which they'd agree to refer to MJ as the King of Pop, SoundScan was a new technology being used by the record industry and Billboard to figure out which albums actually sold well.

The real king of pop at the time? Garth Brooks. Absolutely buried Jackson in terms of album sales in the early-to-mid-1990s.